Do women hold women back in the workplace?

Do women hold women back in the workplace?

In a third and final post/diatribe on why women subjugate themselves, particularity in the workplace, this, in the FT describes a world where women attack each other, in the workplace and otherwise, because they lack power.  I don’t necessarily agree with this in principle, but it certainly holds a light up to the fact that a lot of women’s subjugation is actually caused by women themselves and not men.

I believe that powers women and men hold are different, and not equal, but it is biology, as much as society that has caused this rift between the sexes, and the civil war women can often wage on each other.

Women score an an early advantage, maturing quicker, more socially adept, we out perform boys at primary school, only to flag in secondary as the hormones kick in.

Puberty confers a new power on women – that in being attractive to men, often older men with more financial clout, and it is hardly surprising that many young women use this to their advantage.  They are evolved to do so after all – to mate, when they have the chance, which is why women denigrating those girls who get themselves knocked up early, or use their looks to their advantage are doing their own biology a disservice. Some girls need to breed early, or be cast aside as past it as a new  generation of younger girls comes to male attention.

How to give women more power is a societal problem, and giving women equal rights in the workplace is a sop to this principal, but it fundamentally fails to account for women’s biology, which has not shifted to accommodate legislation that gives women the opportunity to work their way up a career ladder originally fashioned for men.

Those that can, will delay breeding, but do so at a risk: that they will fail to procreate and that is the curse of many women who put their careers first today. The fact that in the ‘breeding’ market, what, I suppose, historically, was termed the ‘marriage market’ women are of depreciating value, and that is what makes us so vulnerable, and which is why virgins have always been prized, women who have already bred of less interest and thus, depreciating status, if the power conferred on young attractive women by men’s magazines is anything to go by.

This is why older women (female bosses, anyone?) can be spiteful to younger women who may have less status, but are basically more attractive to the (probably male) powers that be, and who can accrue status by attaching themselves to an older, more powerful man. It is, in many respects, written into our biology.

As a young, moderately attractive women, I never felt in the least bit disadvantaged by my gender – after all, as a child of the 80s, we had female rulers, and my mum was, for  a time, the main breadwinner.  But that was until I had a child myself and then female disenfranchisement  all started to make sense. My value ‘on the open market’ diminished, my time became more stretched, not to mention my body, – which had always been a ‘selling point’ (quite genuinely. I was a stripper and a journalist, so I felt more keenly than many the physical market forces that operate in the whole of society, but are crystallised in both the sex and magazine industries) and was now dog tired, physically disadvantaged by the whole messy process.

My status, which until then had felt reasonably assured by being, first, the daughter of and then, married to a richer, older man, not felt even more questioned when my husband – a banker – became less rich and I had to return to the workplace disadvantaged by having had two children and an accompanying CV gap. So much my problem, but I certainly felt that older women in the workplace weren’t about to give me a leg up, particularly those who had not had children, and if I’m honest, I felt many still viewed me as a threat. It was a man – a father himself – who took a chance on my holey CV, but then – and I hate to admit it – I was wearing a pretty short skirt that day.

If you’re female, you will probably already ‘dislike’ me simply from that description, but it’s hardly surprising we all use what advantages we have to get ahead, or simply to get by. It’s hardly surprising that older women can sometimes be unkind to younger women, particularly in competitive environments, like the workplace, or a stripclub, for that matter  –  where women are often competing for the respect of men – be it for their looks, or for their skills. Women  have to claw their way into a position of relative power, often by forming  relationships with men who are in a position of giving them this power in the first place – and because of the way men confer power on women – which is often based on the way they look – these original women don’t want to be usurped by their younger compatriots, which is why they are in some respects, help maintain the power status quo.

Ultimately – and this is the rub – men are, by and large, genetically programmed to be attracted to (and thus confer status upon) younger women and there’s no changing that.

This is putting it baldly, but in general, men, despite losing their looks at an often parallel, or faster rate to many women – (this too is genetic – they don’t rely on their looks in the same way, and many women at least tolerate or even prefer a ‘silver fox’ for the status such an attachment undoubtedly confers) appreciate in power as they grow older. But it is to a large extent, women holding women back, not men, who probably don’t even think about it. The worst witch, when I was a working girl, was not the big male bosses, who would treat the girls ‘fairishly,’  according to the pecking order of the club – ie. how much money they made – although the top earners inevitably became their girlfriends; it was the house mother, who was a bitch regardless, perhaps because she no longer had the earning potential of many of her younger pretenders.